What's actually working on Substack? "Perspective," says CEO Chris Best... "If you want to know some facts, you can ask Claude" More in today's access.show

Here's the bar for a great mission statement, according to 'AI Coachella' prof Anjney Midha: Would you feel good if, on your grave, it said "He figured this out?" 🪦 More in today's access.show

'AI Coachella' prof Anjney Midha's biggest regret in his life as a founder: "I wasn't [pivoting] fast enough, because I felt like I'd committed something to my investors and team that I had to hold constant, artificially." "No iteration, no progress" More in today's access.show

What Lukas Petersson has done with Andon Market is one of the only "stunts" I've liked this year... A retail store run exclusively by AI. The perfect intersection of *showing our beliefs* , some genuine controversy, and what only they can do as an AI evals company. More in today's access.show

if you're only ever talking about your product, why would anyone believe you? why would they like you? to break thru with founder-led comms, you need to share opinions and ideas that are larger than yourself. more at end of today's access.show ep

ok this was a treat. we had The Audacity showrunner Jonathan Glatzer on the show to talk about his new *Succession for tech* its tagline: "tech changed the world... but so did the bubonic plague" 🤪

"We regretted that we didn't block Forbes from putting us on 30 under 30," says Poke's CEO 🤣 "Avoid being on that list at all costs."

So... Poke had a billionaire user who agreed to pay $136k/mo for the service during its price haggling onboarding 🤣

Is Granola killing their moat by opening up? "The traditional SaaS wisdom is not gonna fly in the future," says cofounder Sam Stephenson "The tools get more useful when you can use them with each other. If we don't play ball, we're not relevant."

The real reason CEOs push AI meeting notes: More context for agents doing the work in the future 😅

Does Granola's new icon look like a butthole, or merely butthole-adjacent? Co-founder Sam Stephenson weighs in:

thanks to Mercury's CEO for keeping my "points guy" ego in check..... i'm working on being less annoying 🙃

The "bicycle for the mind" is no longer real, says Starboy's Dan Kuntz. Now, tech is more of a "fleshlight for the mind." 🤣

"There's an epidemic of hardware startups in SF shipping vaporware" says Dan Kuntz, creator of Starboy. "We waited to announce the preorder until I could take actual pictures of it with my iPhone... those perform better than renders anyway"

Is Google outsourcing our brains?! People said this years ago about Search and Maps — and that turned out to be a bit overblown 😅 Will AI be any different? "The challenge for society to figure out is not to replace thinking, but to use it for harder tasks" says Head of Search Liz Reid

"Before AI slop, there was human slop, and we've got plenty of it..." says Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. "What the platform is good at [for the last 20 years] is pulling the great content out. We've been fighting manipulation for our entire existence!"

The best storytelling hack? Just *say it out loud* 🙃 This forces you to put yourself in the audience's shoes, and helps ensure you don't sound like an informercial.

"The hard part of my job isn't getting computers to do things. It's getting *people* to do things." -Sublime's Sari Azout

i appreciate the storytelling meme but tbh it's just the new content marketing 🙃 the real lever (that i try to practice) is feeling confident it's going to achieve all of your startup goals *long-term*, from recruiting to product strategy & selling investors on USP.

How do you build a moat as an AI wrapper? Assume the big guys will come after you, says Harvey's Winston Weinberg. How would you defend it? Even if it means giving up ground to other startups, planning for disruption is the best long-term plan.

Harvey's Winston Weinberg does interviews in Google Docs to weed out the "good talkers." Goated.

I’m launching Sources, a new publication about the tech industry’s inside conversation, and Access, a tech interview podcast with my friend @hamburger.bsky.social. The first issue of Sources drops tomorrow, featuring an interview with Mark Zuckerberg, which airs in full on Access this Thursday.

mornings with friend

happy monday nerds

Don't miss this Decoder episode with @hamburger.bsky.social There are few people who can clearly see an industry from both inside and outside at the same time. Ellis is that with tech & culture. www.theverge.com/decoder-pod...

Meaning founder Ellis Hamburger on the AI startup frenzy: ‘Everyone’s pivoting, then pivoting again’

Meaning founder Ellis Hamburger on what AI founders aren’t saying publicly.

theverge.com

I’m guest hosting the Decoder podcast for the next couple of months, starting with this chat with the one and only @hamburger.bsky.social www.theverge.com/decoder-podc...

Meaning founder Ellis Hamburger on the AI startup frenzy: ‘Everyone’s pivoting, then pivoting again’

Meaning founder Ellis Hamburger on what AI founders aren’t saying publicly.

theverge.com

@diegoarguello.bsky.social lovely piece on DS2 🙏

@plante.bsky.social adored the DS pod man 🙏

crunch is a thing men do because planning requires them to be honest with themselves about themselves

ryan cooper@ryanlcooper.com · last yr.

video game publishers do crunch because they are poorly managed. they'd save money on labor if they planned their projects properly instead of bashing out half the product in a crash last-minute stampede. probably the only way to force them to do that is with unions

nobody does it like TE 🥵